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Tuesday, October 13, 2015

October 11, 2015 The Lord's Prayer - Finding Contentment

Many of you know that I’m kind of a strange eater (actually, maybe
I’m normal and everyone else is strange).Some of that is simply because I don’t like some foods, such as cheese,
but some of it is because I quit eating certain foods because I no longer have
to eat them.When I moved to
Louisville in 1981 to attend seminary, I had very little money.My savings, which I believed would last
much longer, quickly ran out, and food was one area where I could save some
money.My goal was at the time was
to spend $15 or less each week on food, and even in 1981 that wasn’t much money
for a week of groceries.

The Kroger down the street often had $0.79 pizzas, which meant you
actually ate the box with a bit of pizza sauce.Not very appetizing, but you could survive on them.And on Ramen noodles.And bags of white rice.And three for a dollar frozen pot pies.And some meals were plain popcorn and
nothing else but a glass of water.It was near the end of my second semester before I could buy an
eight-pack of bottles of Coke, so one day of the week I could have two
Cokes.It was usually on Sunday
evening, and I can’t describe what a big treat that was, to sit down for a few
minutes and drink that cold bottle of Coke.

In my second year of seminary, I could, on occasion, afford to go to
a fast food restaurant.At the
time, there was a Burger King coupon in the Friday editions of the Courier-Journal that was a buy one
Whopper get one for free, and if I was fast enough, I could get to the library
before anyone else made it to the newspaper rack and tear out that coupon, and
drive into the middle of St. Matthews, across from Trinity High School and
enjoy a meal that seemed better than a trip to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse!

I am happy to have moved beyond that struggle, but it was very good
for me to experience that part of life.You don’t forget struggle, and in that sense, struggles can remind us to
be grateful.When I sit down to a
meal now, I am very cognizant of what a blessing it is to have a pantry and
refrigerator full of food.I am
grateful to be able to eat, and to enjoy meals that are more than a plate of
popcorn or a small package of noodles.

As we continue a series of messages from the Lord’s Prayer, this
morning we come to the phrase give us
this day our daily bread.

We’ll read the passage from Matthew that gives us the Lord’s Prayer,
and also a passage from the book of Philippians, where Paul describes his
contentment, as we talk about Finding
Contentment.

Matthew 6:5-15

9 “Pray,
then, in this way:

Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

10 Thy
kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

11 Give
us this day our daily bread.

12 And
forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

13 And
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

Philippians 4:10-13

10 But
I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at last you have revived your concern
for me; indeed, you were concerned before,
but you lacked opportunity.

11 Not
that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever
circumstances I am.

12 I
know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in
prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being
filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.

13 I
can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

We live with such an abundance of stuff that, on the surface at least,
we hear the words of Jesus to give us
this day our daily bread in a far different way than those who were in his
audience on the day he first spoke them.How often do we worry about our
daily bread?In our pantry we
have today’s bread, tomorrow’s bread, and in the freezer, bread for more
days.It’s not having daily bread
that concerns us as much as it is having too much daily bread!

Even though we have our daily bread, it does not mean we are free
from the anxiety of what we need in the days ahead.We live in very, very anxious days and that anxiety can
drive us to a crippling sense of worry and it can drive us into an obsession
with accumulating money and belongings in an effort to find a sense of security.

So let’s consider what it means to pray for our daily bread, and how we find the kind of contentment of which
Paul wrote.

The call to pray for our daily
bread is an invitation to simplicity.

Jesus was talking to people whose lives were the very model of
simplicity.They led simple lives
because there really was no other choice.While we can stockpile food in freezers and other storage methods, the
people in the time of Jesus were unable to do so.They were people who lived on a day-to-day basis and
struggled to have enough for each day.For most people in that time, getting one’s daily bread was a literal
truth.They led lives of
simplicity because of their circumstances.They lived barely subsistence lives, working each day to
earn, hopefully, enough money to feed their families.The far majority of people lived in a grinding poverty that
left them wondering if there would be enough bread for that day, let alone the
next day.

For the most part, we have so much more than the average person in
the day of Jesus, but I’m not sure were any freer of worry.Perhaps it’s because we search for
security in the things we own, and our sense of security has been greatly
shaken in recent years.

Jesus invites us to a life of simplicity by asking us to pray simply
for our daily bread.It is his invitation to ask for what we
need rather than all the extras we either think we need or that we desire to
have.It doesn’t mean we aren’t
concerned with our needs, or that God isn’t concerned with our needs; it means
we have learned to be content with simpler lives.

You remember, I’m sure, how God provided for the Hebrew people as
they wandered through the wilderness after being freed from captivity in
Egypt.God provided them with
manna, a bread-like substance they collected every morning.It was, quite literally, their daily
bread.They were only to collect
what they needed for the day, and no more.It was a very dramatic lesson about learning to trust God.

Paul writes in Philippians 4:11-12 I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.I know what it is to be in need, and I
know what it is to have plenty.I
have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether
well fed or in want.

But there is another reason why simplicity becomes important.As the population of our world will
cross the 7 billion mark at any time, and the estimates of growth for the next
generation are staggering, simplicity with either be voluntarily adopted or
enforced by a scarcity of resources.

To ask for our daily bread
reminds us we are not as self-sufficient as we think.

I remember on Christmas Eve, when I was in the fifth grade, our
neighbor’s house burned to the ground.One of the kids was my age, in my class at school, and my friend.The flames lit up the night sky and the
glow from the fire could be seen from quite a distance.It was hard for me to imagine the
experience of losing everything you own in a matter of minutes.

We work hard to bring a measure of security to our lives.We work to save money, we invest money,
we purchase insurance, and search for other ways to prepare us in the event of
disaster or to bring a sense of security in life.

But the economic downturn has brought home to us the reality that
financial security is more precarious than we want to imagine.Stock value can evaporate very
quickly.A 401K can be wiped out
in a single trading session.A job
loss or emergency can eat away at our savings.A medical crisis, even with insurance, can stretch us to the
limits financially and remind us in very vivid terms of our own mortality.I don’t say this as a way of generating
fear or pessimism, but as a reminder that we often search for a measure of
security in places and things that are not as secure as we believe them to be.

I listened to an interview recently with one of the wealthiest
individuals in the world who had recently experienced a life-threatening
situation.It was very interesting
when the discussion turned to faith.When asked if he believed in God he said no, but added how he wished he
did have belief and faith because of the comfort and sense of security it would
bring in life.Here was someone
who had the resources to buy anything he wanted, to travel when and where he
wanted, and yet he was still looking for a sense of security in life.

Jesus reminded his audience that our hearts long for security, that
we expend a great amount of energy searching for security, and that means we
should look for security where it can truly be found.It is a sense of security that gives us a peace and confidence
in the face of life’s greatest challenges and will see us through the most
precarious of moments.

To pray for our daily bread is a
reminder that we need to remember those who struggle to find their daily bread.

Have you noticed what Jesus did not say in this line of the
prayer?Jesus did not say give me my daily bread.We should listen to our prayers to see
how often they are filled with the personal pronouns of I, me, and mine.

Jesus says us and our.It is a reminder that we are part of the human
community.It is a reminder that
the question asked by Cain am I my
brother’s keeper (Genesis 4:9) is not just a rhetorical question, but has a
very specific answer, and the answer is an affirmation that we do have a
responsibility to those who struggle to secure daily bread.Almost a third of the world’s
population fails to find enough daily bread for their families.That’s more than 2 billion people.That number will only increase as the
population of the world escalates and as environmental stress and degradation
becomes more acute.

In the 6th chapter of Mark’s gospel we read the story of
Jesus and his disciples arriving in a remote area and a large crowd had
gathered in anticipation of their arrival.The disciples told Jesus he ought to send the crowd away and
into the surrounding villages to buy food.Jesus told his disciples you
give them something to eat(Mark
6:35-37).Perhaps the disciples
were simply concerned and believed sending the crowd away was the best
solution, or, perhaps they didn’t want to be bothered by the needs of the
crowd.Jesus forced them to
confront the need of the crowd.

I’ll confess that I often don’t know what to do with the needs that
confront us.They can be so
overwhelming and so deeply entrenched that I want to throw up my hands and say there’s nothing we can do.But maybe that’s my own way of doing
what the disciples sought to do – send
the people away.I don’t
always have an answer, but I know we are called to never forget those who
struggle to have their daily bread.

Even when we eat alone, we never really eat alone.Every bite of food we take is a
communal act.Someone raised the
food I eat.Someone brought the
food to market.Someone delivered
it to the store.Someone sold it
to me.Food is one of the few
things in life that bind us together, and even when I think I am buying and
preparing my own food, it is not a solitary act.If that bond of community is broken, we do not eat.If a farmer cannot raise food, we do
not eat, and so on down the line.It will matter not how much money I have to buy food, if the community
of food production is broken down, I will find very quickly I cannot eat my
money.

To pray for our daily bread is to
be called to a life of gratitude.

I often find myself thinking of what I don’t have rather than
thinking of what I do have.And
when I look at my life, there really is very little that I don’t have.It’s not that I have too little, but
too much.

And yet our culture will continue to present me with message after
message that I need more, when there is nothing else I need in life.And those messages slowly and
unknowingly soak into my mind and heart and gradually turn my gaze away from
what I can do for others and cause me to think about myself.

Samuel Wesley was a minister and the father of John and Charles Wesley,
who wrote many of the hymns that we sing and also founded the Methodist
Church.When John was five years
old his family’s home caught fire, trapping John on the second floor.The neighbors quickly came to their aid
to help fight the fire and also to form a human ladder that allowed one of the
neighbors to reach John and to pull him to safety.The house was a total loss, along with all of the family’s
possessions, but they were all safe and together.Samuel Wesley was reported to have said, come neighbors, let us kneel together and
give thanks to God.He has given
me all my eight children.Let the
house go.I am rich enough.

It’s a very simple phrase – give
us this day our daily bread.At least it seems simple at first glance.In reality, it is a huge acknowledgement we make to God of
our dependency upon him and upon one another.It certainly asks us to be grateful for what we have been
given.It could very easily be us
who are struggling to find daily bread.May our gratitude bring us to help others to find their daily bread.